Are Asian Americans really for the end of Affirmative Action?

It’s cap and gown time, and along with it come thoughts that threaten to break apart Asian America. You’ll notice it when you are at your child’s commencement this graduation season (my Jillian, the rock star, gets her B.S in Geology this week at San Francisco State, where the graduation speaker is Mayor Ed Lee).

It’s hard to imagine there are some unhappy Asian Americans, given the number you are likely to see on campus.

But what if after four years, you are graduating from your “fall back” school and not your number one choice?

Instead of joy, some Asian American parents are actually wondering how differently they would feel if their kids were not at UC This and Cal State That, but at their real number one choice, that private school or that Ivy League place, the one that rhymes with kale?

That’s the school that said no to your offspring’s resume of perfect grades, SATs, and tireless extracurriculars, and instead let in a few others who couldn’t hold your son’s high school jock.

What’s next to come as Asian American adults–more discrimination?

That’s the logic that’s going through the minds of many Asian Americans these days as they grapple with this question: Should race-neutral policies replace affirmative action?

More than anything else, it’s the single biggest threat to the notion of an Asian American community. And it’s brought out the opportunists who want to use Asian Americans to break up the solidarity on the issue among people of color. The Asian American group 80-20 launched an online petition drive and now claims it has 50,000 signatures of Asian Americans who want to end the unfairness of it all.

They are sadly deluded.

It all comes about as the Supreme Court contemplates the latest assault on affirmative action, Fisher v. Texas, later this year.

If the Sandra Day O’Connor-less court swings further rightward, it would mark the real end of a policy that has assured Asian Americans equal opportunity in education for decades.

LOWELL HIGH SCHOOL
San Francisco has dealt with this issue in the past with the caps on Asian American admissions at my alma mater, Lowell High School. I said back then that the issue is not about race, but about limited resources. Besides, if a super-majority white population is not considered good, why would a super-majority of Asian Americans be any better? The answer in my mind has always been to make more Lowells.

But how would you do that on a national level? It’s harder given all the budget cuts on education, but adding resources, not dumping race-based admissions, is still the real answer.

In California, where the alternative to affirmative action–race-neutral admissions–has been the law and upheld since the passage of Prop. 209, inequality still exists. All 209 did was codify the ideal (a colorblind world), but it de-codified the groups that are less than equal now. The colorblind 209 has left us with a policy that gives us results like UCLA, where 91,000 applicants vied for 5,400 spaces.

The numbers don’t work.

Qualified applicants will still be denied, not just Asian Americans. Race-neutral approaches don’t come close to addressing the real problem of the need for more resources.